Gotcha !

I got a call this week that malware had infected one of our PCs. That’s a pretty rare event, so I connected to it to see for myself.

It looks like a Trojan, hacking tools and some adware. I clicked ‘Clean computer’. And just like that, the ‘computer guy’ fell for malware!

You see, the malware was not the stuff listed above – it was the ‘Clean computer’ button! Fortunately, when I clicked it, i was prompted if I really wanted to run software from the ‘justdied.com’ domain.

That’s when I realized this was not a popup from Microsoft Security Essentials, but just a box displayed on a mostly white screen in the browser. Looking at the top, I saw the URL:

Then I actually READ the dialog – “threats that migth compromise”. “You need to clean your computer to prevent the system crash”.

This time, the browser slowed me enough to think through it. Hopefully, even if I had continued, the antivirus or patching would have prevented an infection.

New variations of malware can be very convincing. If and when something happens to you, slow down. Read each word. Think about what’s going on. Be careful out there!